Moving Forward (Completed)

Chapter Fifty Five

Katherine paced the length of their bathroom, refusing to look at the little white stick until the timer on her phone pinged. She was late, really late, but her doctor had told her that going off birth control could cause her cycle to become irregular since she hadn't actually ovulated during the entire time she'd been on it. This was a concept she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around. She'd had regular periods every month, though apparently not actual periods because she hadn't ovulated... in over a decade... but that was the point of the hormones wasn't it, to prevent ovulation. It was after all how most birth control worked to prevent pregnancy... you can't get pregnant without ovulation. This knowledge didn't make the information any easier to process. Did it mean she had more eggs still available? Were residual hormones still fluttering about her body preventing her from ovulating? How long would that last? Had she already ovulated and didn't know it? And the most annoying question lurking in the back of her mind... why hadn't her doctor mentioned any of this when she'd initially started taking the pill? It seemed like information she might have wanted to research a bit beforehand... though given her relationship with Scott she figured she'd have started anyway.

They'd done as Rafael suggested and the only change they'd made to their sex life was that Katherine stopped her birth control. They'd quietly find time for one another occasionally during the week after going to bed... this didn't happen every week, but at least every other week. The evening of debauchery, as Katherine had dubbed it, did happen once a week. Every Saturday afternoon MJ would leave for Lucia's house, and Rafael... occasionally Katherine... would suggest a place outside of the bedroom, something new they wanted to try, or repeating something they'd both enjoyed in the past.

Regardless of what kind of sex they'd been having, the concern at this particular moment was that they had in fact been having sex... a lot of sex... Katherine glared at the tiny stick from across the bathroom and checked her phone... forty five seconds had passed. The first time she'd taken one she'd been open to either result, pregnant or not, it didn't matter. This time however, she desperately needed the result to be negative. She was becoming desperate to have her period at all. They were scheduled to leave for Europe in three weeks and she didn't want to spend the entirety of the trip worried she'd randomly start and be caught completely unprepared.

She laid the phone next to the pregnancy test and bounced her eyes between the flashing black blocks and the numbers twirling by on the screen.

Not pregnant popped up before the timer went off and she chunked the stick in the garbage with a huff as she exited the bathroom. The result didn't do much but add more uncertainty. What she really wanted was her period.

"You ok?" MJ's eyes lifted from the guide book she was skimming when Katherine muttered to herself as she passed.

"Yeah..." her shoulders dropped and she forced herself to relax, "I'm fine, just a mountain of things to do before school lets out."

They hadn't mentioned anything about the possibility of a baby to MJ. Katherine hadn't felt the topic was appropriate considering they weren't technically trying, and since MJ had expressed interest in a younger sibling, blood or not, she figured they could just let her know if and when she became pregnant.

MJ stretched out on the couch, making herself more comfortable. "I've got finals and that's it." She was an excellent test taker... that person in class scoring so close to perfect that it messed up the curve for everyone else... and this was without any kind of cramming. "If you want I can help you pack up your classroom after school... maybe visit with Mrs. Andrews."

"I would love the help and Mrs. Andrews would love the company." Katherine continued her path to the fridge, fighting the urge to grab something chocolate by pulling out an apple. She stared at it for a moment then slid it back and closed the door, finding Rafael's stash of chocolate chip cookies instead and settling in to eat an entire row.